paulrph1 Loc: Washington, Utah

I was re-reading my manual for the Nikon D750 about bracketing and I was wondering why I should bracket? Question ultimately is if I can change the picture in PP in Photoshop by changing the brightness and the contrast why do I need to bracket if they do the same thing? The advantage I see is less memory occupied and ultimately less work. Any thoughts?

Db7423 Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

You will have more latitude in post if you are starting with a property exposed file. In most circumstances you can easily nail the exposure in camera so bracketing (for me) is reserved for difficult situations or HDR. Just another tool at your disposal. ;)

jmizera Loc: Austin Texas

Bracketing is also useful to capture three or more images at different exposures used to create an HDR image.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

Bracketing is just another tool at your disposal. I used it with my D750 just last night, 5 shot bracketing at 1/3 stop graduations. I did a shoot for a chain restaurant Monday but they requested night time shots through the Windows from outside. I took them last night at 10:45pm to make sure there were no customers. The exposure is hard to nail so I used bracketing to help assure I would not be having to go back another night. It worked perfectly.

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

Like other techniques, it's there for you to use when it's appropriate to the situation, like in MT's example. I do a lot of sunrise/sunset shots overlooking a local pond. Many times, the correctly exposed original is just fine and can be tweaked to my satisfaction. Other times, the only way to come up with a really nice image is to merge the bracketed shots and perform HDR (kinda like the Heimlich maneuver) on them because the dynamic range is too great for a single shot. Shooting RAW also helps, since you can recover lots of details in shadows. Good luck.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

No amount of post-processing can bring back important detail lost in blown-out highlights or sections of oversaturation. In difficult lighting situtations containing strong contrasts where this may occur, exposure bracketing can greatly improve your chances of capturing an image with the best possible exposure for the scene.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

All of the above... and ... if the background is significantly different then you can place the well exposed subject on the well exposed background.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

You can't recover blown highlights if you overexpose your image, and if you underexpose it the shadows will need a lot of work to bring out detail without noise. And this is assuming you are shooting raw and processing in Adobe Camera Raw for your first pass on editing. If you are merely changing contrast and brightness on an adjustment layer for an image that entered PS as a jpeg, you are destroying lots of data when you make these adjustments.

Get the exposure correct in the camera - and by this I mean let the camera record as much brightness as possible without overexposing the highlights - and this may not necessarily look "correct" on the back of the camera. In high contrast situations the image may appear dark. But as long as the highlights are intact, you can still make a decent image in most cases.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I watched a video class by Matt Kloskowski, the Lightroom expert. He said that he almost always brackets, just to make sure he has the best possible shot to process.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

DavidPine Loc: Fredericksburg, TX

I am an architectural photographer and bracketing is necessary, in my opinion. I manually bracket 3 to 5 shots and base my stops on ambient light. I might go 2 stops or 1/2 stop depending on what I am seeing. Some images I convert to HDR and others I don't. I shoot some panos as well. Post processing is just part of the game and it takes what it takes to produce a final image. I don't restrict myself to specific routines because every view I am trying to capture is different. I don't always use all my bracketed shots but I use many. When I do portraits I don't bracket because I am regulating the light more easily. When I shoot exteriors in daylight I bracket but usually toss all except one. When I shoot twilight or dawn I usually use all my bracketed shots. When I bracket I use live view and make my adjustments manually. I do not use automatic bracketing. Others may do it differently. My way works for me.

paulrph1 Loc: Washington, Utah

Many, many, many thanks to all that responded and it gave some great insight into bracketing. I sometimes bracket but do so most at where the latitude of exposure is greatest. Too much contrast but have never merged an image. That I will have to try, someday. I also have not done any HDR yet and have loved the results I have seen. That, that I have done I have done manually.

tomeveritt Loc: Fla. + Ga,NY,Va,Md,SC

You have a lot to look forward to. Our "Edge" over competition is our bracketing. A "Blown Out Window is a Blown out Window" A sunset, with dark surroundings, w 5 (+/- 2) brackets, get ready for a shock.
:)

Chuck_893 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

I'd like to weigh in on this because I've only just started working in raw. I recently went to a couple of museums, shooting raw, and decided to bracket, 3 shots at 1/3 stop increments over and under. Then I selected in each case the "normal" (metered) exposure, brought it into Adobe Camera Raw 7.4 (as high as I can get with my present setup), did my initial adjustments there, then exported them all to Photoshop Elements 11 (again as high as I can go) and finished up. I then put nine of them into Before and After pairs. Some are subtle. Some are not so subtle. I believe all are pretty good, and what I think I learned is that if I'm shooting raw, unless the range is pretty extreme I can probably skip bracketing. I do not at the moment do HDR, and since I've mostly stopped shooting jpegs it does seem that slight exposure errors are not fatal, especially for slight overexposure, which many workers are calling ETTR, Expose To The Right.

I should emphasize that none of these are merged. Each was first "printed" (only word I can think of) at defaults, then manipulated in ACR for exposure, contrast, shadows and highlights &c, then sent to Elements for Final Tinkering. :)

Interestingly, if you look at the last pair in this set, that pair is from an original jpeg, not a raw capture. It was supposed to be raw, but I'd been monkeying so much with my camera that it locked up, and when I rebooted it, it defaulted to jpeg but I did not notice for a few shots. That last pair, then, was made from the jpeg that I processed as if it were a raw capture, in ACR, then sent to PSE-11 for final finishing. I have convinced myself empirically that treating a jpeg like a raw, while not AS good, is better than just PPing in PSE alone. Specifically I think I got better detail in the otherwise blown whites of the duster and cap.
Here is the link to the full set on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/gp/43619751@N06/ueBd5b

Post Processing, Before and After by Chuck Haacker, on Flickr

JPEG Processed Through Adobe Camera Raw by Chuck Haacker, on Flickr

paulrph1 Loc: Washington, Utah

[quote=Chuck_893]I'd like to weigh in on this because I've only just started working in raw. I recently went to a couple of museums, shooting raw, and decided to bracket, 3 shots at 1/3 stop increments over and under. Then I selected in each case the "normal" (metered) exposure, brought it into Adobe Camera Raw 7.4 (as high as I can get with my present setup), did my initial adjustments there, then exported them all to Photoshop Elements 11 (again as high as I can go) and finished up. I then put nine of them into Before and After pairs. Some are subtle. Some are not so subtle. I believe all are pretty good, and what I think I learned is that if I'm shooting raw, unless the range is pretty extreme I can probably skip bracketing. I do not at the moment do HDR, and since I've mostly stopped shooting jpegs it does seem that slight exposure errors are not fatal, especially for slight overexposure, which many workers are calling ETTR, Expose To The Right.

I should emphasize that none of these are merged. Each was first "printed" (only word I can think of) at defaults, then manipulated in ACR for exposure, contrast, shadows and highlights &c, then sent to Elements for Final Tinkering. :)

Interestingly, if you look at the last pair in this set, that pair is from an original jpeg, not a raw capture. It was supposed to be raw, but I'd been monkeying so much with my camera that it locked up, and when I rebooted it, it defaulted to jpeg but I did not notice for a few shots. That last pair, then, was made from the jpeg that I processed as if it were a raw capture, in ACR, then sent to PSE-11 for final finishing. I have convinced myself empirically that treating a jpeg like a raw, while not AS good, is better than just PPing in PSE alone. Specifically I think I got better detail in the otherwise blown whites of the duster and cap.
Here is the link to the full set on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/gp/43619751@N06/ueBd5b
Thanks for sharing and I loved the PP from the raw